Silverman’s success came just days after the versatile Shaftesbury Harrier, aged 12, recorded a trio of UK-ranked track  performances at the London Indoor Games with her first ever competitive 60m (9.10 seconds) and 200m (29.80) sprints and an U13 UK top 20 800m time of 2:35.29. 

Another athlete to achieve a national ranking at her first attempt was Sara Black of London Heathside, who covered ten miles of St Albans roads in 1:05.50 to go straight to V45 UK no. 3. 

In Tel Aviv, a race was specially organised at the Hadar Yosef stadium for Girmaw Amare to challenge Ayele Setang’s longstanding national track records in two events which are never available in standard competition. Amare, 32, reached 20,000m in a world-class time of 58:53.06, a full four minutes quicker than Setang’s 1994 mark, before continuing another 384 metres round the track to take the one-hour record by 1.3 kilometres. The current world records, 56:26.0 and 21,285m respectively, have been held since 2007 by Haile Gebrselassie. 

Beatie Deutsch won the Miami Half Marathon in 1:16:47. Born in New Jersey, Deutsch, 30, is an ultra-Orthodox mother of five who took up running five years ago.

She made Aliyah in 2008 and broke the course record for Israeli women at the Jerusalem Marathon last year. She has also won the Tiberias Marathon, the Israeli half marathon and marathon national championship. Her personal best marathon time of 2:32 is just shy of the Olympic qualifying standard.